Donington Park’s annual festival of trucking fun roared back into life today (Saturday), headlined by two action-packed races from the British Truck Racing Championship (BTRC). Stuart Oliver and Steven Powell split the spoils in the BTRC contests in front of a bumper crowd.
In BTRC qualifying, it was championship protagonist Stuart Oliver who secured pole position ahead of the first of five truck races across the Convoy weekend. The Volvo VNL driver would subsequently convert pole position into victory ahead of title rival and current points leader David Jenkins, who also received a five second time penalty for track limits on the way to finishing second. Steven Powell would complete the podium in third, with Simon Reid and Michael Oliver completing the top-five.
In the second and final BTRC race of the day, it was Powell who started from first, with Stuart Oliver lining up alongside him, whilst Jenkins lined up third. However, Oliver didn’t get the best of starts and was jumped by Jenkins and his son Michael as Powell led away up front.
The elder Oliver soon began to recover the ground he initially lost, moving past Michael into third, but Powell and Jenkins showed strong pace up front to stretch the lead and ensure that Oliver could not catch the leading pairing in the closing stages of the contest. Although Jenkins shadowed the rear of Powell for the majority of the race, the MAN TGX machine didn’t set a wheel wrong and took victory with a margin of just 0.984s ahead of Jenkins and Oliver, followed by the younger Oliver and John Bowler.
In Division 2, Callum Eason took a double class-victory to take the lead in the standings. Three more BTRC races are still to come on Sunday.
In the other categories competing, the Britcar Endurance Championship contest saw the Porsche 992.1 Cup car of Nick Hull and Richard Avery take victory, while Simon Allaway took the CNC Heads Sports & Saloon Car Championship spoils. The Coupe Cup Series race was won by the pairing of Hazem Zaki and Harvey Chittell, while Matt Wilkins rounded out the day with victory in the Civic Cup.
Click here for the full results from this event.